She leaves a husband, Joe Myers, three small children - twin girls, Mycca and Syke, and a son, London, named after her father's birthplace - and a string of broken dreams.

'Cat' Sassoon was born with everything that makes for success in American society. Through the wealth and contacts of her parents, Vidal and Beverly, she was well positioned to exploit her good looks and talent for publicity.

But it was all to end in misery and failure. She went to a Hollywood party on New Year's Eve with her husband. The drink was flowing and drugs were readily available.

When her husband checked on her on new year's morning, Catya Sassoon was dead.

Since her wild childhood she was a likely candidate for an early grave. Her mother, who runs a direct sales cosmetics business, said that her daughter, when just 22, had just finished "a year free from a drug habit that was so tough there were times I felt I was going to lose her."

Her father knew the value of hard work.

He started a small hairdressing business in London that gradually grew it into an international by-word for high fashion, good quality hair styling and products. Catya was the first child and the tearaway among Sassoon's four children. She left school when she was 14. Within a year she was married. The marriage did not last long.

In her teens, she quickly became one of the top junior models in New York. And there were drugs aplenty. By the age of 21 she was hooked and a regular at detox clinics on both coasts. While the police tried to determine exactly which unnatural cause she died from, her body was being buried in a hastily arranged funeral at Eden Hills Memorial Park in Mission Hills, Los Angeles.